Queenie is sent to Coventry for Picking Fights…

..With Pigs. Yes you read right.  Queenie Wineti my sweet little Hereford heifer was caught picking a fight with a small PIG. It started out as such a soft and gentle misty day.

The animals all slept in. The peacock added his new found calls to the usual barnyard noises. I went to bed with a band and woke up with an orchestra I thought.  He is like an entire horn section with a few rogue string instruments chiming in.

John turned the compost, steaming in the cool morning haze.  Honestly I love compost. It  smells so good when it is this hot. 

I shifted the electric fence so that Hairy MacLairy could clean up a patch of land that will be sown in  buckwheat.  The ideal would be to put the pigs in there to root it up but we will wait for Sheila, I need a pig who will follow me and behave herself as we shall soon see.  For the moment we will let Hairy (well HairLess actually) eat it up. 

Then I made a small pen with a creep door so that the lambs could eat their extra feed in peace without their mother stealing it all.  Lovely as she is, Mama is a sheep after all.  

John picked the rest of the radishes.

Which I pickled to have on hamburgers for dinner. (very tasty) … It is just a regular fridge pickle made with coriander seeds and leaves and a little fresh ginger, onions and  garlic. We will eat it in a week. I was at the kitchen sink with all the windows open when I heard a deep woofing sound, in fact it sounded a lot like a cow barking, then a shrieky piggy sound. I watched TonTon bolt for the pigsty followed closely by the guineas. Fight I thought, capping the jars and drying my hands.  The guineas always make a bee line for any fight. I am not sure if they are policemen or hecklers. Usually it is a rooster fight but this one sounded different.

As I was putting on my gumboots I heard a loud wack, then cackling guineas, crowing roosters, more strange grunting sounds and then the absolutely incongruous sound of Kupa slowly calling out.  Shut uuup! Shut uuup!.

I rounded the corner of the barn and there was Queenie backing up and ramming the pig sty fence with considered and considerable force. And from the other side of the  pigsty fence the black and white piggie  was doing EXACTLY the Same Thing, screeching and wiggling practically bouncing up and down on the spot with piggie fury.  leaping back at the cow.  I am not even going to begin to speculate what they were saying to each other.  Do you see Daisy out the back of that shot clearly saying.  “Ooo  Hoo Hoo I am NOT the one  in trouble this time!” 

Very Bad behaviour.  Not cricket At All to pick on a piggie 600 pounds smaller than you are Queenie! Though I think this pig was giving as good as she was getting.  Anyway, I went through the barn and out the other side and Queenie  was called out of the field,  that adjoins the pigsty, and she was sent to the Black Hole of Calcutta (the darkest pen in the barn) so she could have a Think about her Behaviour. Now she is in the Rat House Paddock.  Most inconveniently I might add, as all the good grass is out the other side and I shall have to take her hay,  which is now in short supply, until this rather surprising problem is solved.

No fence will take that kind of pounding. She is a heavy little pitbull of a cow.  I shall have to rethink the sty. I have asked John if he has any corrugated iron at the workshop. Maybe if Queenie cannot see the pigs she will not be so intent on battering down their walls and ripping them apart.  Trouble in paradise!

Good morning. It is early early. Most of you are still asleep. We are off to the Bantam Swap to look for a hen for Kupa.  Don’t say anything though. I don’t want him to be disappointed. She has to be a well bred, bright eyed, articulate peahen with a reasonable vocabulary for Our Kupa.  I think they should at least be able to talk to each other.  So I am going to be picky. Of course it is probably all about the feathers if I were to ask Kupa. But I do not want some simpering piece of disapproving fluff tottering about. We want a good hard working friendly country pea hen.

You all have a marvelous day. I shall take my camera.  So you can see what I see, but tomorrow.

celi

PS. I am not sure if WP is still having the comment problem but if you do get time to comment, don’t forget to uncheck the little ’email me comments’ tick below the comment box, so you are not sent unnecessary messages.

That was a confusing sentence even to me, but I am sure you know what I mean. Good morning.